You’re not important to me but I want to meet with you

I am not too happy with the phrasing &quot;Outside of a company there are two types of meetings; 1) When you want something from someone, 2) When they need something from you.&quot;<p>I like to think about my meetings as &quot;1)Am I building a relationship? or 2) Is this a transaction?&quot; If it is 1, then I would invest more of my time into this. I do not want to spend a lot of time in building a relationship with my plumber, even though I do want something from them.<p>I believe the author was thinking the meeting as a relationship building while the founder was treating as a transaction and hence the disconnect.

While the general advice feels sound, the point of doing small talk as part of the scheduling was not explained clearly enough for me.<p>It&#x27;s not going to convince anyone to do things for the other person. It doesn&#x27;t send the message that the meeting is urgent or important, and nothing about it will help getting both parties closer to the objective. It sounds like it would be better replaced by pleasantries that are actually related to the meeting, like the choice of food, possibility of a follow-up meeting, etc.

What are people&#x27;s thoughts on using Calendly and the like? I&#x27;m asking people for meetings a lot lately, and usually after they agree I send them a link and ask them to &quot;find whatever time works best for you.&quot;<p>Practically, this seems like the nicest thing to do. They get to pick a time in my very open schedule and there&#x27;s no back and forth. But emotionally, it feels like I&#x27;m giving a task to someone who just accepted to help me.<p>These are all 20 minute video calls, by the way.

Ok, I live in the midwest and run a startup. How do I get an audience with Steve Blank? Believe me, I know I&#x27;m not important to anyone in Silicon Valley (welcome to flyover country!)

I guess I am used to seeing a different kind of startup. The kind where the founder having an &#x27;administrator&#x27; sounds like a bizzaro weird prioritisation of early hires.

While I do find the back and forth of finding a date to meet one of the most mind numbing tasks one can do, I think the author here is placing way too much importance on this CEO’s actions. Would he still write the same if the ceo used a bot to perfectly impersonate the ceo?